Mother
by C.D. Campbell
That thing inside of Sherwood had tried to conjure his mother. Or some sort of facsimile of her. Paul shivered for the countless time. Those six letters in luminescent digital green had shocked him as much as if his mother had abruptly come to stand before him. The phone itself had momentarily become to him a vicious conduit that could lash out at and pierce him at any time. Even now, days later he was hesitant to touch the thing. Mr. Friendly. Why hadn�t the entity tried for his father? That he could have handled, he thought. �Because she�s dead,� came the voice. Paul Callan shook his head as if doing so would extricate the disembodied voice from his mind. He knew from experience that it would not. Randomly he paced the floor of his sparse, dingy apartment. Paul knew the voice was right. He�d known, or at least felt for years now that his mother was no longer in a place where he could find her. As a boy in the orphanage he had imagined her to be deceased already. In his idealistic heart he had made himself believe that her death was the event that had caused him to be abandoned to the church. When he had grown older, recollection of this imaginative reasoning had filled him with guilt, as though his thinking it had caused it. As an adult, he imagined simpler things about his mother; the feel of her hair as she bent to kiss his smooth baby forehead, her delicately perfumed scent, her loving, laughing eyes. Poppi had taught him to concentrate on the beautiful, decent aspects of people and things. �You�ve conjured her too,� commented the voice, �or some sort of facsimile of her.� The voice seemed to laugh, a dry, mechanic kind of snicker. It was mocking him. Paul sat down on his sofa and bent his head to rest in the cradle of his cupped hands. Should he mourn? He had never known for certain that she had crossed over but Mr. Friendly, however unwittingly, had convinced him; and now that he knew that his mother was beyond him, a different type of emptiness gaped in his being. A piece of his consuming puzzle had been stolen from him. The quiet of his rooms echoed through him, solidifying the knowledge that he was alone. �There�s still your father,� tempted the voice. The phone rang and Paul subtly jumped. He pretended to ignore the voice as he rose from the couch to put an end to the ringing. He dug his cell-phone from his pants pocket and nervously looked around his apartment, pushing the yes button without looking to see the identity of the caller. �Paul? It�s Evelyn. Alva wants you to get down here.� He breathed in deeply, unsure whether he was relieved or disappointed that it was only Evelyn. �Paul? Are you okay?� Her voice was a comfort, soothing and compassionate across the telephone lines. Paul shook himself from his gloomy reverie. �Yeah. Be there soon.� He closed the phone and put it back in his pocket. �There�s still you father,� the voice repeated as he locked the door of his apartment behind him.
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